Please note: I will be frank with the issues surrounding my medical care at St. Barnabas Medical Center (SBMC) and it may seem at times that the negatives outweigh the positives, but they do not. I choose SBMC as my hospital because I get superior care there. I discuss the problems to assist in making this an even better place for patients, and to give other patients an example of actively participating in one's own care. If a patient cannot actively participate by her or himself then I strongly suggest that the patient have a personal patient advocate to assist them in dealing with the issues that arise in the hospitalization of the patient.
I am in the St. Barnabas Medical Center (SBMC), a hospital with heart issues complicated by my kidney failure and dialysis. I am texting here using my cell phone.
I don't use my cell phone for the complete message, just as a diary note that I can then go back and edit, as I am doing know.
I had been talking with a friend of mine about using various video and camera functions of my laptop and cell phone to maintain an electronic diary-type journal, and blogspot.com makes it easy.
Here are some notes from today:
I had to ask for breakfast and lunch today, my first full day on the floor. I got here around 6AM from the ER. Room 2315A. I had a minor altercation with my day nurse over not getting breakfast. Her first response was to blame my admitting doctor for not writing the order. I jumped all over her because I had asked the night nurse as soon as I got on the floor to check on getting breakfast and she said she would. If the night nurse had come back and come back and said their were no orders from the doctor, I could have called him myself.
Before starting breakfast I called and asked about my medicine that I take with my meals, a phosphorous binder to help manage answering the phosphorous level in my body for healthy bones. The person answering said something like "OK." By now I should have known to follow up, because when I finished breakfast and the medicine still hadn't arrived, I went out to the nurses station and learned it hadn't even been ordered yet. I reminded my day nurse that the medicine didn't do much good if it wasn't taken with the meal. She, ov course, agreed.
Lesson learned: Not getting fed can be a downer in a hospital at meal time and not getting your meds properly can be harmful to one's health. So always check on your food and medicine orders as soon as possible when arriving in a new nursing section of the hospital.
The relationship with my day nurse—to her credit%mdash;began to improve immediately after our run in over breakfast.
I went to dialysis for three-and-a-half hours from 11:35 AM to 3:05 PM plus transit time. I weighed 74.4 at the start. My dry weight is 73.5. They set the dialyzer to take off 1 liter. These are all things I have to pay attention to, and each session go over the treatment process with my primary care technician. At SBMC they are all Registered Nurses (RN).
My day nurse said she would hold my lunch for me so I would have it when I got back from dialysis. But when I did get back, my lunch wasn't there. My day nurse explained that she had called down to dietary to say I was going to dialysis and dietary had taken me out of their computer. By the time she figured out what had happened lunch preparation was closed. Dietary was going to send me an early dinner, which they did—getting here just before regular dinner time. I also asked for and got a second dinner that was delivered a little after regular dinner time.
I was beginning to wish I had requested in the ER to be sent to the section with 2302 where I had been the last time I was here. It was as good as it gets, from my exoperience—which is mounting.
Later ...
Around 9:20 PM I have turned off my cellphone keypad sound so I wouldn't disturb my roommate as I texted ... but I forgot to turn off my alarms and the 6 AM alarm went off the next morning as my roommate slept. I did the appropriate thing and cursed softly.
The "blood person" came in a few minutes after midnight and drew some blood. It was a very good stick. "Stick" refers to having a needle stuck in your body for some medical purpose. There is a wide range of talent in the art of sticking patients. This person drawing my blood told me she had 15 years experience after I told her I thought she was very good at it.
It's 20 minutes after midnight and I can't sleep. I am having too much fun texting to this blog from my cellphone.
I seen to be doing OK. They are adjusting my meds. They gave me two doses of sublingual nitro and put a nitro patch on my chest in the ER yesterday to increase the blood flow to the heart. Now they change the patch twice a day.
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